Thoughts, principles, history...

the drops

is how Rolf called the two slits - the symbol for his instruments. they have no meaning for the sound. they help to carry or hang the instrument. but mainly they are visually attractive and there are many more important reasons to use such an instrument. Rolf used to say that he dreamt the shape of the Avalon, and really, the very first prototype has exactly the same form as the products (while tuning system and other mechanical and electrical parts changed a lot)

Rolf's view

Rolf used to write to organize his thoughts, sometimes to send it to a friend. for the public, he only wanted pictures, because people are lazy to read, he said. but see this one:

" Why I do this all?
I am an esthete. I would like to reveal beauty, create it, spread it. Beauty in form, sound and function - as an expression of the universal love.
Beauty in technology appears as well flowing functions, smart mechanisms and modest appearance. " (translation by Matthias)

the concept behind it all

the idea that brought Rolf and Matthias together was
to renovate the electric guitar which was 30 years old
at the time and stuck in heavy technical limitations that bring loss of clarity, hum, weight, and the aggressive
distorted sound that made it the symbol of revolution and subversion.
and to overcome the delicacy of the acoustic guitar and the difficulty to amplify it

now, another 30 years later, this new class of guitars have become very common, but still do not have a name that brings its quality to consciousness: they are not between the acoustic and the electric guitar but ahead of both in terms of flexibility, stability and transparency.

this concept is not limited to guitars and eventually will be built into all other instruments and into completely new instruments that bring maximal dynamic and intuitive expression to the musician and simple handling to the sound tech.

the first live-looping tool that had a record and overdub function and a lot more was the Paradis LOOP delay in 1992 and quite some of those units are still around and searched for since it had most abilities of its industry standard offspring Gibson Echoplex.

while live-looping works with any instrument, it works a lot better with electric than miked instruments.
and for the guitar there is a difficulty to amplify it: a standard guitar amplifier tends to wash up the loop-layers

live looping and the Paradis philosophy for amplifying instruments work so well together because studio quality speakers keep the loops transparent and a piezo pickups optimized for minimal or controlled body resonance minimizes the feedback which otherwise makes the loop noisier with each layer.

so the Paradis concept should be adapted to most existing instruments and it simplifies the creation of new instruments (no need for a strongly resonating body). any vibrating material can immediately turn into an easy to handle instrument since usually the bass resonances call for big physical dimension but using a pickup, very small objects can create big bass sounds. if not, we build a Polysubbass octaver into it, they are small.

although there are some typical tendencies amongst live loopers and Paradis musicians, it is not related to a live style or music style.

while the connection between the looping - Paradis connection was not recognized when Matthias started his live looping music with modded delays, but he documented it 1988 when he planned to make a specific unit. and when live-looping began to spread and used with percussion he saw the necessity for a whole class of instruments and started the idea here.